A Coalition of Lions (The Lion Hunters #2)

A Coalition of Lions (The Lion Hunters #2) Page 4

“Well, and so was the pretender Abreha, and that has not stood in the way of his treachery in Himyar!”

“I am not Abreha,” said Priamos quietly.

“Yet after him you are the eldest son of Candake the queen of queens, the eldest of Caleb’s nephews, and I find you here in violation of your commission.”

“How am I Candake’s eldest? What of Mikael?”

“Mikael!” Constantine laughed. “Mikael is insane.”

“So should you be if you had spent the last thirty years shut up in the same three rooms!” Priamos burst out, in the most uncontrolled blaze of passion that I had ever seen from him.

There was a still, terrible moment while Constantine and Priamos faced each other, pale and dark, like a matched pair of opposing chessmen.

Then Constantine said in a flat voice, “You are under arrest for desertion. You will submit yourself to detainment in this house, or I will have you tried for apostasy against the empire’s heir.”

All this while I was struggling to understand the language. “Apostasy?” I asked desperately.

“Treason,” whispered Priamos in Latin, stunned.

“I am regent here,” Constantine went on. “I act for the king of kings Ella Asbeha, the emperor Caleb, as his viceroy Ella Amida. You stand and challenge me in open defiance of my authority.”

Constantine spoke, as he must have known, to the strict protocol of all Priamos’s sequestered childhood and military training. Priamos, without seeming to show any kind of irony or insolence, knelt at Constantine’s feet in the deep obeisance that he had made to my father when first they met, his hands open as if in supplication.

The boy in the white cotton cloak said suddenly, “You would be prone before your uncle the emperor.”

“I submit to your authority,” said Priamos, and lay flat on his chest, with his face sunken against his forearms.

Constantine gave a signal to his spear bearers. They moved to stand guard over Priamos, the bronze blades of their ceremonial spears held menacingly at his either side.

“Ras Priamos, you may have fought against Abreha under Caleb’s orders, but you are still Abreha’s brother,” said Constantine. “Why he spared you and all your regiment is beyond my comprehension. He did not even try to ransom you. I cannot trust anyone so favored by the Himyarite pretender. My loyalty must lie with Wazeb.”

“Your loyalty lies with me,” I interrupted in cold fury, hearing the frost in my voice as blowing straight down from the northern sea. “How dare you. How dare you stand cloaked in imperial robes not your own, in a palace not your own, with the royal spear bearers of a rival empire at your back, accusing your own sovereign’s ambassador of treachery! You were to return to Britain next spring. Even if I had not meant to recall you, you would deliberately disobey Artos in seeing this command to its completion!”

Well, we were battling now, and openly, and not even in Latin, but in our common British dialect.

“Is that an accusation of treason, or your own interpretation of my actions?” Constantine said, barely controlling his fury. “On whose authority do you speak?”

“On my own,” I said. “My God! That you should be wallowing in such splendor, while your sovereign lord and the sweet prince who was to fill your position here next year, my own twin, lay bleeding on the cold fields around Camlan! I traveled four thousand miles to reach you, who have been named my father’s heir in the event of my brothers’ deaths. Do you think anything less than the total destruction of my kingdom could have brought me here?”

Now Constantine seemed unsure how seriously to take me. “Do you mean to tell me—”

“Artos the high king of Britain is dead,” I avowed, “and Lleu the young lion, the prince of Britain, slain in battle with him. Medraut, my father’s eldest son, should have been our regent, as you know; but he, too, is lost. The king of the West Saxons is in control of our southern ports, the queen of the Orcades is grasping for what is left, and both have offered bounties for my capture. Britain’s collapse is held in check by your own father and those of the high king’s comrades who survived the battle of Camlan…”

I took a breath and thumped my fists against my forehead in despair. “Oh, God, I have not the strength to repeat all of this in Ethiopic!”

I took another breath, trying to collect myself. Constantine and I stood face to face, but when I sought to hold his gaze he let his eyes slide away from mine, like all the people of this land.

“My father named you his heir in the event of his sons’ deaths. Britain is yours for the taking,” I said slowly, searching for appropriate words, “though I am now loath to bless your kingship with my hand in marriage, however long we have been promised.”

The weight of my tale struck him now, and for a moment he shut his eyes, grimacing. Then he mastered himself and said evenly, “You are upset.”

“I mean it,” I swore, though by the terms of my father’s legacy Constantine would be king whether or not I married him. He was the high king’s eldest living nephew, and the high king’s sons were dead.

“Would you spend your life in exile, battling against my reign, as Morgause did Artos?” Constantine asked, as though he were already crowned.

I answered coldly, “I do not need to seduce my brother to produce a queen’s pawn, as she did when she created Medraut. I am Artos’s own daughter. Any son I bear would have a greater claim than you to Britain’s kingship.”

“Don’t covenant your unborn children,” Constantine said contemptuously.

“Don’t compare me to my aunt!”

We glared at each other.

Then Constantine gave a tired smile, and took my hands again, gently. “Forgive me, lady,” he said, speaking Ethiopic himself, so that it would be understood by all and was something of a formal apology. “Your news has shocked and dazed me, and I am taking it in ill grace. I would not have greeted you so jestingly to begin with if I had known what news you bore.”

“How can you know what news anyone bears before he tells it?” I said, and shook off his hands.

I glanced down at Priamos, who still lay flat on his face at our feet. I could see the gentle rise and fall of his back as he breathed; he lay quietly, not trembling or straining in any way, though the ceremonial spears biting into his ribs held him transfixed. Surely I had some authority over my own ambassador.

“Do you release Priamos Anbessa and make apology for the ill reception you have given him. He has most steadfastly served and protected me, and the prince of Britain as well.”

Constantine spoke to his guards. “Withdraw your spears.”

The spearmen ceased to threaten Priamos, and he got slowly to his feet. But the guards, who had not been dismissed, remained at his sides. Priamos did not raise his eyes; he showed no trace of defiance or injury.

“What was that all about?” the forward boy in white asked casually.

His regal self-assurance was so like my brother Lleu’s that I realized who he must be: this was Wazeb, Caleb’s heir, whose kingdom Constantine was guarding. I noticed now that he was even crowned, after a fashion; his head cloth was bound with a simple circlet of twisted grass, whose points met in a cross.

“Artos the high king of Britain is dead,” Constantine said in Ethiopic. He faced Priamos again. “For your safe delivery of the princess of Britain you have the gratitude of two kingdoms. But I must insist on your detainment here, until such time as you can prove to me surely that you are no threat to Wazeb’s sovereignty.”

Constantine turned to me. “And you, of course, my lady, we shall serve in any way we may, as best we can. We shall prepare you an apartment here—”

“Thank you, but I think not,” I answered. “I have already accepted the hospitality of my brother’s dear friends in the city. I think Kidane has less claim to royalty than Ras Priamos, and I trust you will not find my hosts guilty of any secret sedition.”

“Come see me tomorrow morning. I am up to my neck in negotiations with the Beja tribesmen this afternoon. We can talk more privately in the morning, and decide what there is for us to do. You could meet me for the service at St. Mary of Zion, then break your fast with me. You’ll like the cathedral.”

“All right.”

But our trust was in shards before it ever had a chance to set.

Other guards came in to escort Priamos out of the chamber. He nodded a farewell to me, his expression impassive. If he had tried to hold my gaze, I do not think I would have been able to look at him; I felt as though I had led him into a trap. But of course he did not try to meet my eyes. Our shared tragedy at Camlan, our conspiratorial flight from Britain, our partnered voyage, vanished like sea spray after a breaking wave.

Telemakos was waiting in the corridor.

“Have you met your husband? What did you think of him? Do you have to stay here longer, or will I bring you home to meet my mother now?”

I could make no answer. I watched Priamos being led away.

“Why is Ras Priamos under guard?”

I managed to collect myself, and answered with bitter anger: “Because he is Abreha’s brother, as you have pointed out. Abreha was kind to him in Himyar, and Constantine therefore thinks Priamos is not to be trusted.”

“Kind to him!” Telemakos exclaimed. “Ras Priamos was brought before Abreha naked and in chains after their battle. So say his warriors.”

“Yes, well, there is kindness and kindness. When your enemy sends you home alive and free it counts as kindness.”

“What did the viceroy say when you told him he was to be high king of Britain?”

“Told me not to conceive my own nephew, like Morgause the queen of the Orcades,” I answered impulsively and inappropriately. Medraut was after all the child’s father, beloved though never known, a legend; like Odysseus to Telemakos’s namesake.

The dark subtlety of my sarcasm was lost on Telemakos. He laughed, showing off his missing teeth. “Why would you need another nephew?” he asked. “You have me.”

I stared at him. He was the high king’s grandson, the only child of my father’s eldest son.

“Why, so I have,” I whispered.

CHAPTER III

Coffee and Frankincense

THERE WAS A LION skin hanging in the reception hall of Kidane’s mansion. Telemakos stopped below the skin and said, “This is my father’s lion.”

The skin covered nearly an entire wall. Its sightless eyes stared upward at the ceiling over snarling, bared teeth; the mane was black. All the pelt was dark, but it had an edge of gold that made it seem always changing color when you moved past.

“Ras Meder killed this himself, with a spear, and no one to guard or help him,” Telemakos told me.

After a moment he added, “Gedar’s children across the street don’t believe that.”

“Gedar’s children never met your father,” I said. “But I believe it.”

Telemakos asked suddenly, “Did my father look like you?”

“We are alike, but not in looks,” I answered. “Most of my family looked like me, dark-haired, dark-eyed; but Medraut—what do you call him? Meder, Ras Meder, was more like you. His skin was fair as mine, but his hair and eyes were like yours.”